


Grief for the Departed

by Sanru



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Drinking to Cope, Friends With Benefits, Gladnis Week, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 01:43:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12924639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sanru/pseuds/Sanru
Summary: In the wilds of Eos, monsters fight and hunt since recorded time.It's a game of survival.  Who can out run who.  Who can out fight who.  Who deserves to be at the top of the food chain.Unfortunately for chocobos, they are not very high on the chain.





	Grief for the Departed

**Author's Note:**

> *sobs uncontrollably*
> 
> I can only apologize for this. I wanted a little angst and instead a essentially wrote a tragedy. 
> 
> I am so sorry.
> 
> Gladnis week day 2 prompt of OMG drunk and wearing the others clothes.

Ignis was not much of a drinker but when he did, he always went for the hard stuff.

Walking down into the basement pub was an instant relief.  The hot, humid air of Lestallum fading away until it was just the hot, stale air the reeked of body odor and cigarettes like he would expect from such a seedy little dive like this one.  It was a bit of a relief but not by much and instead brought about a whole new set of discomforts. 

Like the way those three girls were eyeing him like a piece of meat.  

Ignoring them and the unknown male on the other side of the room he had caught the attention of, Gladio made his way over to the bar.  He had to go out and around the small but packed dance floor full of grinding bodies and lacking any actual dancing.  Ignis was like a sore thumb in this place, looking much too sharp and well dressed compared to the rest of the patrons.  

He was perched lightly on a stool at the packed bar, a cute blonde to one side giving him longing looks and a man on the other too busy hooting and hollering with his friend about some sports match on the television set behind the bar.  Gladio squeezed in between Ignis and the sports guys, shooting the girl and apologetic look and a small shake of his head.  Hopefully she would get the hint and actually go enjoy the rest of her night.  

Gladio decided to get right to the point.  Ignis was drinking whiskey by the smell of it, neat, and whiskey was for regrets.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“No.”

Ignis hadn’t even bothered to look at him or acknowledge his presence in any other way.  Gladio sighed, hating it when Ignis was choosing to be difficult but completely understanding given the circumstances.  “Can I at least join you for a drink?”

This time he got a small twitch from Ignis’ shoulder.  A half hearted shrug to show his indifference as he was too busy trying to down half his glass in one gulp.  Gladio flagged down the bartender and ordered a stout. He had a feeling he was going to be here for awhile.  

The evening proceeded from there like he had expected.  The blonde eventually got the hint and left so Gladio stole her seat.  He saw her a little while later on the dance floor clearly enjoying her partner’s moves and he felt happy that she was now enjoying herself.  Ignis certainly hadn’t done anything even remotely entertaining.  He continued to just sit and drink, staring blankly at the wall of hard alcohols behind the bar, coming out of his mind just long enough to order another drink before quietly settling down again.  

Gladio let his attention wander somewhat even as he kept an eye on his friend.  He knew that right now, Ignis’ mind was going a hundred miles an hour, digesting every piece of evidence down to the finite details as he tried to figure out where he had gone wrong.  It wasn’t often that he was wrong and that always irked him more than he let on and it didn’t help that when  _**Ignis** _ was wrong the damage was typically catastrophic.  

Or deadly.

He turned down several chances to dance and let himself get sucked into the sports event being broadcast behind the bar.  It was some kind of tournament so it helped whittle away the hours as he waited for Ignis to come out of his reflective funk.  It made him almost wish he had agreed to have Noct and Prompto joining them so he would at least have someone to talk to but the whole point was to get Ignis to talk and he wouldn’t trouble his Highness with such a ‘petty indiscretion’ or whatever the hell else he wanted to call it.

The bartender cut Ignis off near midnight.  They had been there for about four hours now, Ignis probably a little closer to five, and he had apparently gone through four whiskey neats and even though he was still calm and collected on his stool the bartender didn’t dare give him anymore booze after going through almost half a bottle on his own.  Gladio didn’t blame him.  Ignis was probably so calm and collected because he hadn’t been up and moving around yet.  Or he was thinking so hard.  Or both.  

Ignis had given the man a long, hard look as if he had been speaking another language or in a heavy foreign dialect that made it impossible to understand him, before he seemed to get the hint.  It took him a long couple of moments to settle his tab, obviously having difficult counting out gil and figuring out the tip.  He handed it over to the bartender.  “I’ll pay of his too,” he said pointing a thumb loosely at Gladio, eyes already down in his wallet to sort of the appropriate change again.  

“Aw thanks Iggy,” He’s been nursing his tall stout all evening.  It would have been better to have with a conversation to sit over but he wasn’t complaining.   

Ignis merely nodded in return.  He wobbled only slightly as he got off his stool but managed to walk with much more dignity and poise than Gladio thought him capable of especially in his drunken state.  He managed to move under his own power all the way outside and part of the way down the street before the booze finally got to his head enough to cause him some difficulty.

He stumbled over his own feet and would have went down if Gladio hadn’t grabbed him and pulled him up right.  With barely a hitch in his step, he pulled Ignis’ arm up and over his shoulders.  “Come on Iggy.  Let’s go back to the hotel.”

“I’d rather not,” he spoke clearly if a lot slower than he typically did which Gladio was grateful for.  His accent was a bit heavier, masking out the short ‘o’ completely from his sentence. If he spoke any faster, Gladio knew he would've had a hard time understanding him.

“I’d rather you did.”  Gladio shifted his hand down a bit more and took a loose hold on the back of Ignis’ belt to hold him up.  “You’re going to regret this enough tomorrow.”

“Isn’t that what whiskey is for?  For regrets?”  It was something his old man use to say and Ignis knew that.

“Yeah but that was a lot, especially for you,” he pointed out.  Ignis usually only had a scotch neat or maybe a glass or two of wine when he did decide to have alcohol at all.  

“Maybe there are a lot of things I regret.”

He had a point there.  It had been a hard afternoon on everyone a couples days ago, especially Prompto.  Poor kid had just been kind of sitting there on the bed, dejectedly flipping through his camera’s pictures when Gladio checked in on them one last time before going after a sullen Ignis.  “Just take care of Specs,” Noctis had assured him after checking to see if Gladio wanted them to come with.  He looked back at his friend sadly, “I’ll keep on eye on things here.”

Still, ambushes happened and there was always a high chance for a casualty during one.

“It was an ambush-”

“One I should have thought about after hearing reports of a behemoth in the area.  Preventative steps could have been taken.  I should have warned against going for that particular hunt.  I should have insisted on not taking the cho-” he cut off with a pained, distressed sound that Gladio wasn’t use to hearing coming from Ignis.

Yeah, great reward for a successful hunt.

Kujata’s sucked to take down.  They were really big and it wasn’t easy trying to block a several ton hoof being slammed down when the thing stomped.  Still, battered and weary, they managed to do it.  Noct had summoned the chocobos to take them back to the Crow’s Nest to collect their bounty while Prompto had been begging Ignis to make steak that night.  Gladio hadn’t even realized something was off until the last second as their chocobos came around the corner of land pushed up by the meteor and even then he barely had time to yell out a warning.

The behemoth came out from the rocks and well… it was a predator and chocobos were its favorite prey.

Still, despite their weariness and it being just another example of predator versus prey, they had taken that behemoth down hard.

Even after the dust from the fight had settled, their was a different kind of battle to be fought.  Noctis ended up warping after his and Gladio’s mounts, both of which were unhurt but rightly terrified and refusing to come to the whistle like they should have.  Prompto was an absolute wreck, screaming and panicking as he fluttered about his injured mount, slapped down by a large claw and pinned there until they had managed to drive the behemoth off him.  The bird had a broken leg, wing and some serious lacerations but Gladio had done what he could to triage the animal while trying to talk Prompto into calming down enough to be useful and not hyperventilate.  

Ignis’ mount…against a behemoth’s jaws it hadn't stood a chance.

Ignis claimed to not really like chocobos and only tolerate them but that was a blatant lie.  After doing what he could to stabilize Torque and calm down Prompto, he had gone to check on Ignis and Liliac, knowing and expecting the worse.  He was going to have the image of Ignis sitting there, stroking her head and whispering to her softly as she past embedded in his memories for eons to come.  There was nothing they could have done for her.  The behemoth had nearly bit her in half in one bite before they managed to retaliate.

Since then, Ignis had been what Gladio could only describe as shell shocked.  Going through motions but not really seeing what was going on.  Ignis hadn’t even been able to string more than two sentences together for the past three days and he flat out refused to drive at all.  Gladio hoped he would snap out of it soon.  As much as he hated to seem unaffected by all this, they had to keep moving. The Empire was still hunting for them and as much as he wanted to hang around the chocobo post with everyone else and make sure Torque was going to be alright, they were just going to hope that Wiz could get him to pull through.  

Next to him Ignis suddenly heaved, pulling away to avoid throwing up on Gladio but not himself.  His shirt sleeve and part of his shoulder coated in the fouling smelling liquid.  He hadn’t been eating much these past few days, drinking ebony so he would stay awake and only drinking water when Gladio really  pressed him to.  Gladio supported him as he continued to throw up.  Finally resorting to dry heaving until he was limp and spent in his arms.

Gladio pulled him back and calmly stripped Ignis of his shirt right there in the middle of the street.  Ignis would never forgive him for carting him back to and through the Leville covered in vomit.  The solid shirt was shoved into the arsenal for him to deal with later -hopefully it didn’t make a mess in there but right now he didn’t care- and he slipped off his open shirt and forced it onto his friend, using the never used zipper for once so that Ignis could keep his modesty in check.

“Come on,” he said lifting Ignis up again.  “Let’s go.”

The rest of the trip to the Leville was uneventful.  Gladio stripped down and helped Ignis take a  shower and brush his teeth once they reached their room.  He tucked the two of them into the same bed together, curling protectively around Ignis as he checked in with Noct via text message.  The text he received back was good.  Torque would need a few weeks but was expected to survive and make a full recovery.  Wiz was encouraging them to stop by the next time they we in the area so that Ignis could pick out a new mount.  The chocobo rancher wasn’t blaming them for the lost of his bird at all even if he was saddened by it.  It was just the natural order of things.

He told Ignis all this, finally getting a sob out of him.  

Gladio had been waiting for this.  Ignis had been bottling up the emotions inside himself for too long but now the floodgates were finally opened.  He bawled.  Wracking sobs shaking his frame as he rolled over, trying to physically curl up into Gladio’s chest.  

Gladio let him, stroking his hair and holding him close.  He pressed kisses to Ignis’ brow and whispered sweet nothings in his ear.  They had fucked a few times before now in a no strings attached deal and Gladio shamelessly used what he knew of Ignis’ body to work him through the worst of it with gentle touches.  Rubbing his hip gently while pulling him up on top of him.  Kissing the tears softly away from his face.  Lightly tracing his fingertips down his sides.  Nothing to arouse him but rather to calm him.  

It took awhile but in the end it did work. He lay draped limply over Gladio, even more spent than before.  Gladio continued to touch him, nuzzling his face gently and kissing away the few tears that remained.  Ignis lifted his head, eyes heavy with grief and exhaustion, and pressed his lips gently to Gladio’s in a chaste kiss.

“Thank you,” he whispered between them, lips moving together as he refused to pull back all the way.

“Anytime,” Gladio promised, wrapping his arms around Ignis, intent on holding him protectively until dawn.  “I’m right here.”

Ignis smiled, unshed tears still shining in his eyes, and kissed him again.


End file.
